This Is The Creepy Thing That Couples Do When They've Been Together For A Long Time

When you've been with your significant other for a long time, you might find yourselves getting into each other's interests: He likes watching football? You might start cheering for his favorite team. You like photography? He might tag along to one of your shoots. Pretty normal, right? 

But one thing you might not have noticed is that at a certain point, those adopted interests evolve into something a little... freakier. When you're in a long-term relationship, you and your partner start doing something that's, frankly, kind of creepy — something that might result in a restraining order if you did it to someone you didn't know as well. 

According to a University of London study released this summer, two individuals who are in a very close romantic relationship engage in "automatic motor imitation" — basically, they start mimicking each other's moves and gestures. 

"In relationships that are very close, we act as if characteristics of the other individual are partially our own, reflecting an overlap between cognitive representations of self and close others," the researchers wrote. "This overlap leads to a diminished self/other distinction, and is positively correlated with feelings of love, commitment and intimacy." 

In other words, our brains behave like our S.O.s are an extension of ourselves — that we're no longer two separate people, but one collective existence. 

And according to the study's results, you're more likely to imitate your partner if you've got an "anxious attachment style" — a.k.a., a relationship "characterized by fears of abandonment, which drive a desire for increased personal closeness." Brit + Co sums this up well: "Basically, people who need closeness in a relationship imitate their partner because it makes them feel closer to them."

Does this bizarre phenomenon apply to BFF-ships, too? Apparently, no — the study found that the participants who were in romantic relationships were much more likely to imitate their boyfriends/girlfriends than their boy-space-friends and girl-space-friends, "despite the romantic and platonic relationships being of relatively equal lengths." 

I guess this is kind of romantic if you look at it in a "you complete me" type of way, but let's be real: We are so freaking weird.